Marketplace pilots

Brand, retailer, and enterprise buyers will hand you a "marketplace innovation" slot, an unpaid supply-seed sprint, and a "let's build liquidity together" thread without much thought. None of that makes a pilot. A convertible pilot has a named category, geo, or cohort, a compelling event, written criteria ops and finance can underwrite, and a path to a PO or platform agreement if the proof lands.

Keep unpaid liquidity experiments, co-marketing "seed campaigns," and open-ended design-partner builds separate from customer pilots. Seeding can create evidence later, and it seldom closes deals this quarter. If one SOW mixes unpaid supply-building with a paid commercial path, name which clock you are on and which side of the market owns it.

Hunt for compelling events: a category or vertical launch, a geo expansion, a peak-season capacity gap, a competitor exit or delisting, a board or growth mandate with a dated GMV target, or a procurement or vendor-consolidation window.

Map these buyers early: the category or marketplace lead, supply ops, demand / merchandising, payments / risk, trust & safety, and procurement. One marketplace champion won't get you to a PO.

Marketplace buyers expect KYC and payments work to start up front. In the first week of serious interest, start trust & safety, payments / payouts, KYC / KYB, vendor risk, and often insurance / compliance. Run them before or in parallel with the liquidity proof so you aren't starting after the category lead has said they like the matching demo.

Write down the committee. The marketplace or category champion is not the economic buyer. The check-writer is often the VP Marketplace, the Head of Supply, the CFO or finance for take-rate economics, or procurement for a platform MSA. Champion enthusiasm without ops clearance and a take-rate path dies after the demo.

Work backwards from your target ACV and the platform-agreement process. If production requires exclusive category rights, geo exclusivity, or a take-rate change, start those while the pilot runs instead of after the liquidity tour.

Write criteria an ops owner and a finance lead can both sign, and instrument them inside the pilot window on a bounded scope (one category, one geo, one cohort of supply or demand): fill rate, time-to-match, GMV on the pilot cohort, take-rate integrity (or the contracted fee), cancellation / dispute rate, and supply SLA.

"Liked the matching UI" and "supply said they would join" won't pass as success criteria. Price the pilot when you can, and put the phase-two commercial terms (categories, geos, ACV intent, take-rate / platform-fee path) in writing so the pilot can't turn into a permanent unpaid liquidity lab.

Land a quick win in weeks 1–2 that finance and ops can see without living in the UI. A one-page memo with one underwritable metric (fill rate, time-to-match, or cohort GMV) beats another product tour.

Hold a formal midpoint against the written scorecard, with finance and the ops owners for both sides of the market in the room or represented. Adjust only against the criteria, and don't expand to a second category, geo, or side of the market without saying so.

Keep trust & safety, payments / KYC / KYB, vendor risk, supply onboarding, demand allocation, and procurement moving each week. Marketplace pilots miss the category launch, peak season, or board GMV date when the team finds KYC or payout stalls in the final week.

Restate the criteria, the evidence, and the commercial path from the agreement, then ask for the PO or platform-agreement schedule. "Loved the liquidity demo" without a signature is a stall.

If budget or risk appetite wobbles, cut to one category, one geo, or one supply/demand cohort. Keep the take-rate intact, and don't teach procurement that a successful marketplace pilot earns a permanent fee haircut.

Name the marketplace stall mode before you improvise.

Treat the pilot scope (one category, one geo, one cohort) as a proof sample. Expand from the phase-two price and the platform-agreement terms in the contract.

Add categories, geos, or cohorts after production is live. A published win (with permission) helps you sell the next category owner. If you keep a "pilot take-rate" or pilot-cohort pricing going across the platform, each expansion starts at a discount.

Use this as a pattern drill. It is not a claimed case study, and the numbers are illustrative.

Use the Marketplace pilot scorecard template for the blank worksheet, a filled example, the trust / payments / KYC parallel-path checklist, and a copy-ready AI prompt.